Stepping back 40 years to the European Championships of 1986, to when “spitfires came out of the sun” and British athletes made headline news.

It might not have been Great Britain’s most successful European Championships – that honour belongs to Zurich in 2014 (12 gold medals, five silver, six bronze) – but, for those of a certain vintage, the 1986 edition in Stuttgart is etched most clearly in the memory banks. 

It’s an era that is spoken of in wistful, warm tones and is recalled fondly by many. Jack Buckner would certainly fall into that category – and not just because he secured one of the eight gold medals won by the British team in Germany during that summer of 40 years ago. 

The now CEO of UK Athletics still holds the championship record for 5000m thanks to his victorious run of 13:10:15 to beat Stefano Mei of Italy and fellow Brit Tim Hutchings. It was the last individual event of those championships and rounded off a highly successful final day that also saw Steve Cram win the 1500m title ahead of Seb Coe and the men’s 4x400m team come out on top. 

This was the championships of “spitfires coming out the sun” – the line so memorably used by the great sportswriter Ian Wooldridge to describe the British trio of Coe, Tom McKean and Cram coming off the final bend of the 800m final, going on to complete a clean sweep of the medals. 

There were also gold medal moments for Linford Christie (100m), Roger Black (400m), Daley Thompson (Decathlon) and Fatima Whitbread (Javelin) – who threw a world record of 77.44m in qualifying for the final – to celebrate. Buckner remembers the impact of those performances being considerable, too. 

“It was a really special European Championships and it just captured the nation's imagination,” he said, speaking at the Lindsays Sports Forum – Celebrating a Summer of Athletics in Glasgow recently. “On the final afternoon, I won the 5000m, Steve Cram won the 1500m and Roger Black anchored the 4x400m relay. It just felt, at that particular point in athletics, that you were part of something that had cut through.

“I can remember the next morning we all went back and did breakfast TV. We did the big slot and then, after us, the England football manager Bobby Robson came on for the small slot. It was a time when it felt that we were the sport, which was an amazing feeling. [Athletics] was kind of the nation's sport for a while, so it was amazing to be part of that.”

Aside from Whitbread, there were also world records in the women’s 200m, when Heike Drechsler clocked 21.71, Marina Stepanova lowered the women’s 400m hurdles mark to 53.32 and Yuriy Sedykh launched the hammer out to 86.74m.

Fast forward to 2026 and the championships are heading to British shores for the first time in their history. Once again, Buckner has a vested interest in any home success and would dearly love for the Birmingham crowd to be treated to some more special moments. 

“Athletics can produce these amazing highs, where suddenly the magic happens,” he added. “There's nothing quite like it. When it ‘goes off’ in a big stadium, in a big championships, it's just completely amazing.”